


Within Fate's Fix'd Mysterious Book.

by seraphenanox



Category: Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Gen, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 01:07:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5892238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphenanox/pseuds/seraphenanox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark is a Futurist, not a Mystic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Within Fate's Fix'd Mysterious Book.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Darken'D Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne
> 
> Oh, could I raise the darken'd veil  
> Which hides my future life from me,  
> Could unborn ages slowly sail  
> Before my view -- and could I see  
> My every action painted there,  
> To cast one look I would not dare.  
> There poverty and grief might stand,  
> And dark Despair's corroding hand,  
> Would make me seek the lonely tomb  
> To slumber in its endless gloom.  
> Then let me never cast a look,  
> Within Fate's fix'd mysterious book

In this room there are no crystal balls, no loom nor runes.

Tony Stark doesn’t see hazy or faint shadows and indistinct renderings. It is all HIDEF resolution and 3D graphic. There are no whispers in his ear or prophetic gibbering. Every echo screams out in surround sound.

There is no weft or weave. These aren’t threads. These are data points and information. These are real and now and concrete.

He’s a futurist, not a mystic.

This is what was and what is.

To look forward first one must look back. With every screen, every speech he knows he won’t find what he really needs rooted here. His quarry thrives not on the historians’ past, nor the school teachers’. Its ancestry is in the selfish, unimaginative version that is both gilded and tarnished. This is a meme edit that makes it static and unreal. Bloody flags and ten second sound bites provide no ground to grip and hold and nothing to really learn from.

But he immerses himself in all the glory, all the richness anyway. He knows the path it will take but can’t force himself into the micro byte. He’s here to see not to rage.

Choosing the start is delicate and trickier than circuit boards in the armor.   Too far, too much and you drown in the data and can’t find the program in the system.

Too soon are just bits of language and code with nothing to use to see the whole.

The first traces, the origins are here. They’re birthed from the images of war, the chants, the slogans. It’s midwifed with blood and pain. He watches history move tracing the lines from guns to atom bomb stamped so neatly with Stark Industries in blood red letters.

He watches the dawn of the modern man. The push of science racing to acts as God. One shining example among the darkness and the demons the decades spawn.

The now is worse and just as misleading. Every tick bleeds into history leaving truth and fact behind. It is shades and interpretations at light speed generating shaded questions and faulty answers. Rolling from paranoia and living through propaganda. The future he sees defies reason tracing pseudoscience logic. Myths and legends walk side by side to magic and miracle.

The patterns of things are simple to trace. Inevitable patterns that repeat. Only the speed will ever change. He can trace it from here. The way the winding path unfolds before his eyes and in his ears.

Digitized movies stream past his eyes. The cacophony of voices, music, and explosions are rendered in blue tinged images playing out behind his eyes.  

Words tumble from his lips describing and listing.

Rising and building. Rending and falling. Storms of protests hiding fear and hate. The dying and the desperate scream while the world morns around them. Greed and avarice paired with misery and agony. The rise and the fall. The darkness unending sprinkled with light. The Sound and then the silence.

The What is simple, a familiar thing etched and traced. The who slides through him scattered and uneven. Some are easy. He follows the rise and fall of politicians, leaders and businesses.

But there are footprints he can’t trace. Empty chairs and silent speeches stream past his eyes. Blood drips on empty stairs. Light glints off metal where nothing stands. Everything twists with empty holes where they should stand.

The impacts and ripples expand. Static obscures his eyes. Silence fills his ears. He cannot hear the echo of his speech.

Shaking hands grab at the cup on his desk.

“Close it down J.”

Opening his eyes he has to watch the screens flicker and vanish. He has to disconnect. Just let it go.

“Save all data and recordings.” The coffee has gone cold. “Correlate it with the others. Let me know if we have any overlap.”

“Yes Sir. Captain Rogers is requesting access.”

Tony swallows the coffee anyway.

“Let him in J.”

He watches the blond enter. The after images still shimmer and spark behind his eyes. Faded outlines move and gesture. They rant and they weep.

“What are you working on?” Steve asks.

Tony loves watching Steve’s face in this moment. He can see the awe and the wonder. It overshadows the image’s snarls of hate and rage.

He doesn’t smile. He should, but the mask is too heavy.

“The future.”

**Author's Note:**

> Working through developing my understanding of some of my favorite Marvel Characters. There is just to much to choose from in the Comics and not enough in the Movies. Someone suggested that I post to make sure that I don't loose these. 
> 
> Let me know what you think if you have a minute. 
> 
> Thanks.


End file.
